1 Practice for the PR Professional

“Social Media and Public Relations” by Deirdre Breakenridge offers 8 new practices for professionals working in the field of Public Relations. As she claims, technology is constantly changing the way society communicates and as a result, PR professionals need to adapt to these changes and take advantage of the technological affordances provided through social media. Throughout the book, Breakenridge highlights three main strategies in order to master the web; new research methods, policy development, and public participation. Breakenridge highlights 8 practices a company should take in order to be an expert in the world of social media. From being a “Relationship Analyzer” to a “PR Technology Tester”, these different roles within a company all aim to effectively communicate with online communities, and stop company crisis’ before they happen.

One of the main course concepts that #d2i noted and agreed is present in almost all 8 practices of the book is surveillance. Surveillance is a concept we first discussed when reading Lee Humphreys’, “Who’s Watching Whom? A Study of Interactive Technology and Surveillance.” Deirdre Breakenridge encourages professionals to research and monitor what other companies are doing on social media as well as monitoring employees internally. By conducting a SWOT analysis on other company’s online presence, it becomes easier to self-reflect and determine an effective strategy. Monitoring employee conversations acts as a form of surveillance in order to ensure compliance. The “PR Policy Maker” works within specific departments of the company to increase sharing, collaboration and innovation for better internal and external communication. Surveillance is key in order to understand both online and offline communities. However this brings up an important question of free speech. When monitoring employees’ social media, how does a company separate work from private life? Breakenridge believes these lines are being blurred. She claims, “If employees are speaking on behalf of a company, they should abide by company standards.” (20) It is true that PR agents act as brand ambassadors but when can they be off the clock.

Another type of surveillance is done by the “Relationship Analyzer”. Breakenridge states that the job of the relationship analyzer is to understand how an audience connects with their brands and to their respective communities. Humphreys would call this practice, being “the lurker”. As Katilin Gu pointed out in her notes, the analyzer acts as a lurker in order to gauge topics of interest, community standards, and social ties. Their job is to act as a “relationship booster” in order to move “casual relationships to higher steps”. Kaitlin pointed out how the relationship analyzer can be closely related to our class reading from Nancy Baym on social ties. In this role there is a person who is managing weak ties, trying to convert latent ties and acting as the bridge between the company and their audience. Antonia Iragorri in her notes mentions the “relationship stairway” Breakenridge discusses, and how it can be thought about using our course concepts. Going up the stairway is the transition from latent to weak to strong ties.

This job of creating and controlling social capital is what Tiziana Terranova in the reading, “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy” would call “immaterial labor”. The Relationship Analyzer is being paid by a company to create social capital, the effects are not something material you can grasp, but a value that is important to a company in order to have a strong brand presence online. Everyone in #d2i agreed that the PR industry’s work revolves around immaterial labor and Stephanie Diggles in her notes similarly saw the connection to Terranova’s piece on the digital economy. Stephanie found that Breakenridge encourages companies to find consumers who can enforce free labor by acting as brand ambassadors. Breakenridge encourages social media experts to “identify people who can help to share your company’s content as potential brand champions”(45). This is using online users as free marketing, or what Terranova would classify as free labor.

Crisis management has always been an important role in the PR industry and Breakendridge discusses the many ways a crisis manager can use social media to anticipate problems and stop them before they happen. The “Pre-Crises Doctor” lurks on conversations and monitors the internet in order to see if there are any disasters on the horizon. However besides surveillance, Breakenridge gives advice on how a company should approach their audience. As Patrick Domingo points out this advice is reminiscent of what Alice Marwick and Danah Boyd discuss in “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately”. Both Breakenridge and Marwick and Boyd talk about the imagined audience, or creating content based on your lowest common denominator as to not offend anyone. Crisis management is also important for a company to save face among their consumers. As Alexis Donitz points out, PR experts focus on a company’s self-face even outside of a crisis situation. The idea of saving face can be related to our course concept of face work which is reputation management or trying to gain prestige. What is important about this is that it accurately can summarize the entire book.

Deirdre Breakenridge uses 8 practices to encompass the way a Public Relations professional should be approaching social media, however it can all be summarized in 1 practice which is this. A PR professional needs to effectively understand the landscape of social media including how other companies and communities are using the platforms in order to engage with their ideal audience in good times and in times of crises.

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[…] of repetition and overlap between the eight roles. This was not lost to Patrick or Alexis either. Alison also later picked up on this trend. It seemed as if many of the role descriptions encompassed very […]

[…] of repetition and overlap between the eight roles. This was not lost to Patrick or Alexis either. Alison also later picked up on this trend. It seemed as if many of the role descriptions encompassed very […]